Description

Canadian Opera Anthology – Soprano Volume 1 for voice and piano

This is the first time that this type of collection has been created and published. Canada’s composers have been creating operas since the time of Calixa Lavallée (composer of Canada’s national anthem, O Canada), and continuing into the present. The last aria in volume 1 was composed in 2020.

The basis for this collection is from the doctoral thesis of soprano, Dr. Stephanie Nakagawa. Stephanie received the Canadian Music Centre’s Barbara Pentland Award of Excellence for this research and has performed lecture recitals across Canada to promote the works within this anthology. Allen Clark, editor on this project, has much experience in music performance and classical music in general, being a retired professional violist, and former Coordinator of Composer Services at the National Office of the Canadian Music Centre. He is also a retired professional copyist who was awarded second prize in the Paul Revere Award for professional copyists.

Our aim is to get these arias, and the operas from which they come, into the Standard Repertoire. We gave away over 80 complimentary copies to performers, teachers and students. We have now run out of comp copies, but we have reprinted this volume 1 and you can still buy it.

Check our the workshop given by Dr. Stephanie Nakagawa on this anthology project, on our YouTube channel here

Excerpted pages from:
1.  Willan – Deirdre’s Lament (Deirdre)
2.  Kulesha – Why am I so pale beside her? (Red Emma)
3.  Bury – Above the World (Brothers Grimm)
4.  Chan – Cool Mountain Water (Iron Road)
5.  Louie – Berceuse (The Scarlett Princess)
6.  Estacio – The Storm Aria (Filumena)
7.  Davies – I Need You Guillaume (Transit of Venus)
8.  Burritt – The Orchard Aria (The Dream Healer)
9.  Estacio – The Land is Large and This is the Truth! (Lillian Alling)
10.  MacDonald – The Blades of Grass (Mary’s Wedding)
11.  Weisensel – The Valedictorian’s Aria (Stickboy)
12.  Goulet – Song of Persistence (The Flight of the Hummingbird)